Why Haiti is Dying & the DR is Booming

Haiti a country of nearly 12 million people in the Caribbean is on the brink of total State collapse around 200 0:06 different heavily armed gangs have managed to seize control over large swats of the country's territory and are operating with near impunity while some 0:13 of the more heavily armed gangs that are more similar to paramilitaries have managed to seize control over as much as 90% of hades's capital and largest city 0:20 Port of Prince these gangs have been able to completely overpower what little is left in the country of the former 0:26 Haitian government some of the larger and more heavily armed ones have even managed to establish roadblocks and 0:31 checkpoints between Porta Prince and the country's largest airport and between Porta Prince and the country's primary 0:36 Maritime ports and oil terminals by doing so they have in effect become capable of holding the entire country as 0:42 a hostage by dominating Hades access to the outside world and access to Imports of crucial supplies and oil there's 0:49 hardly even a Haitian government left in the country to speak of that's actually capable of fighting back against them 0:54 because there aren't even any elected government officials remaining in the country at all now the most recently elected president of P jovenel moisy was 1:01 assassinated 2 and 1/2 years ago now back in July of 2021 by still unidentified gunmen who raided his own 1:08 private residence in fact no elections of any kind have been held in Haiti since 2016 nearly 8 years ago now as 1:15 before Moy was assassinated he chose to continually delay the Haitian elections that were supposed to take place in 2019.....

Transcript
0:00 · Haiti a country of nearly 12 million people in the Caribbean is on the brink of total State collapse around 200
0:06 · different heavily armed gangs have managed to seize control over large swats of the country's territory and are operating with near impunity while some
0:13 · of the more heavily armed gangs that are more similar to paramilitaries have managed to seize control over as much as 90% of Haiti's capital and largest city
0:20 · Port of Prince these gangs have been able to completely overpower what little is left in the country of the former
0:26 · Haitian government some of the larger and more heavily armed ones have even managed to establish roadblocks and
0:31 · checkpoints between Porta Prince and the country's largest airport and between Porta Prince and the country's primary
0:36 · Maritime ports and oil terminals by doing so they have in effect become capable of holding the entire country as
0:42 · a hostage by dominating Haiti' access to the outside world and access to Imports of crucial supplies and oil there's
0:49 · hardly even a Haitian government left in the country to speak of that's actually capable of fighting back against them
0:54 · because there aren't even any elected government officials remaining in the country at all now the most recently elected president of P jovenel moisy was
1:01 · assassinated 2 and 1/2 years ago now back in July of 2021 by still unidentified gunmen who raided his own
1:08 · private residence in fact no elections of any kind have been held in Haiti since 2016 nearly 8 years ago now as
1:15 · before Moy was assassinated he chose to continually delay the Haitian elections that were supposed to take place in 2019
1:21 · his choice to delay those elections along with corruption allegations and a worsening economy in the island nation
1:26 · led to mass protests against him that ultimately culminated in his assassination in July of 2021 under
1:32 · deeply suspicious circumstances the gunmen who murdered him are assumed to continue remaining at large while hadi's
1:38 · own governmental investigation into the matter has been extremely slow-going a fact that appears very suspicious when
1:44 · you consider that merely 2 days before moisy was assassinated moisey had appointed a man named Ariel Henry to
1:51 · become the country's next prime minister then 2 Days Later moisy was killed in his home and Ariel Henry Rose to power
1:58 · as hadi's new acting Prime prime minister without ever being ratified by the country Senate after taking over
2:04 · Henry has also continually delayed elections in the country for the past 2 and 1/2 years meaning that since no new
2:10 · president has ever been elected and every single member in the Senate's terms have all been allowed to expire Henry has been acting as Haiti's deao
2:17 · leader this whole entire time without ever being elected or approved by the Senate to do so there have been multiple
2:23 · accusations ever since that Henry was directly involved in the plot to assassinate moisei so that he could
2:29 · seize power in the country for himself including accusations that have come from hadi's Chief prosecutor and then
2:35 · merely 2 months after moy's suspicious assassination rocked Haiti politically a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake
2:43 · struck Haiti's tiberon peninsula in August of 2021 that would rock Haiti even further that disaster would kill
2:50 · around 2,250 people in the country and injure more than 12,000 others and would also
2:56 · cause up to $1.7 billion in economic destruction for ha 0 representing about 8% of the entire Haitian nominal GDP at
3:03 · the time so if you're following in the span of Just 2 months across the summer of 2021 Haiti witnessed their elected
3:09 · president get assassinated then a catastrophic earthquake that caus significant financial and human destruction and on top of those a new
3:16 · unelected and unratified leader who Rose to power under these circumstances and who became immediately viewed by the
3:21 · majority of Haitians as completely illegitimate it was the perfect opportunity for many of Haiti's heavily
3:27 · armed gangs many of which consisted of former members of the haian police to begin seizing advantage of the power
3:33 · vacuum and the chaos to carve out their own areas of influence through Force violence of all kinds within Haiti has
3:39 · therefore skyrocketed ever since 2021 largely as a result of the gang war that has been raging across the country's
3:45 · capital city with the United Nations reporting that more than 3,000 people in Haiti have been killed by gang violence
3:51 · in 2023 alone a statistic that makes the current conflict going on in Haiti one of the most violent ongoing conflicts in
3:58 · the entire world right now with a comparable number of deaths from Warfare in 2023 as happened in Yemen as a result
4:04 · in July of 2023 the Biden Administration in the United States urged All American citizens to immediately leave from Haiti
4:11 · and to not travel to the country under any circumstances until further notice as Haiti continues to collapse into
4:17 · increasingly violent Anarchy moreover since the current crisis in Haiti exploded in mid 2021 well over a 100,000
4:25 · hazian have fled from their country as refugees and risked their lives either by traveling into South America and then
4:30 · trekking by foot through the notoriously dangerous Daran Gap northwards to the United States or have embarked towards
4:37 · US Territory directly by whatever makeshift boats or water capable crafts they've been able to get their hands on
4:42 · which has recently made Haitians one of the largest nationalities of people being encountered by the United States border patrol ever since due to the fact
4:50 · that the various gangs in Haiti currently control an estimated 90% of the capital and largest city in the country and the government has
4:55 · completely lost its Monopoly on Force the unelected aeriel Henry Administration has been repeatedly
5:01 · requesting and at times pleading for a foreign armed intervention into the country to crush the power of the gangs
5:07 · and to restore the power and authority of the government across the whole country after which Henry has promised
5:13 · to finally host the terminally delayed elections in Haiti again on the 2nd of October 2023 his frequent requests for
5:19 · this foreign intervention were finally granted after the United Nations security Council passed a resolution
5:24 · authorizing yet another armed intervention into Haiti as the details currently stand now as of December 2023
5:31 · the United States will be largely funding the intervention with more than $100 million while the East African
5:36 · nation of Kenya will be taking the lead of the intervention with boots on the ground they will be deploying at least a thousand of their own police officers
5:42 · and soldiers to Haiti with the objective of destroying the gangs control over the capital and restoring the authority of
5:48 · the Haitian government and they'll be assisted by smaller numbers of troops deployed from the neighboring Caribbean countries of Jamaica the Bahamas and
5:54 · Antigua and Barbuda but this latest intervention into Haiti going on right now is only the most most recent one in
6:00 · a very very long history of foreign interventions into the country that have gone back centuries none of which have
6:06 · ever succeeded in establishing the conditions to prevent another intervention from becoming necessary again in the future out of the past 108
6:14 · years of History going back to 1915 Haiti has seen the presence of foreign troops deployed to its soil for 41 of
6:21 · those years or about 38% of the time including very recently in 1994 and then
6:26 · again between 2004 and 2019 andu to be yet again in 2023 and likely 2024 until
6:33 · who knows when always in the name of securing the peace in the country and achieving political stability and yet
6:38 · never actually succeeding in doing so the current crisis going on in Haiti is however arguably the worst in the
6:44 · country's entire modern history as Haiti currently stands on the precipice of becoming the only truly failed state in
6:50 · the Western Hemisphere On a par with the likes of mear Sudan or Afghanistan as measured by 2023 is addition of the
6:57 · fragile States index and as Haiti collapses further into Anarchy and violence and the United Nations
7:03 · intervention led by Kenya and funded by the United States comes to try and restore order to the country again Haiti's only Geographic neighbor by land
7:10 · right next door the Dominican Republic or Dr is building a new Great Wall along their entire length of shared border to
7:17 · separate themselves from the Haitians even more than they already are the Dominicans began the Wall's Construction
7:22 · in February of 2023 as the gang war in Haiti was escalating and when it's finished it will be the second longest
7:29 · wall anywhere in the Americas remaining only behind the length of the US Mexico border wall it'll be 4 M high and made
7:35 · up of 20 cm thick concrete and topped with metal mesh to prevent people from climbing over it more than 70
7:41 · watchtowers are planned to be constructed along the wall while dozens of gates will be built into it to enable Dominican soldiers to carry out patrols
7:48 · the wall will include drones cameras Radars motion sensors and fiber optic cables for communications that are all
7:54 · designed to block anyone the Dominicans don't want from the Haitian side from being able to cross over the border and
8:00 · once it's completed the wall will effectively transform Haiti and the Dominican Republic into two completely
8:06 · separate Islands despite them each sharing the same Geographic Island and despite the fact that they've shared
8:11 · this same island for centuries the Dominican Republic in Haiti ended up experiencing radically different
8:17 · Destinies and even without the wall the two may as well already be in completely different worlds in nominal terms the
8:24 · Dominican Republic's economy is 4 and 1 half times larger than Haiti while in purchasing power parity terms the
8:30 · Dominican Republic's economy is seven times larger than Haiti despite the two countries having a roughly comparable
8:36 · population this further means that when it comes to GDP per capita Dominicans are on average 5 to eight times
8:41 · wealthier than Haitians are next door with citizens of the Dominican Republic being more comparable to countries like
8:46 · Serbia or Argentina and citizens of Haiti being more comparable to countries like Rwanda and Uganda in terms of
8:52 · poverty about 58% of Haitians live on less than $365 a day making Haiti one of only six
8:59 · countries worldwide outside of subsaharan Africa where the majority of the population continues to live under
9:04 · poverty by comparison only 4.3% of the Dominican Republic's population still lives in poverty while Dominicans also
9:10 · live around a decade longer than Haitians do 98% of the Dominican Republic's population have access to
9:16 · electricity while only 47% of Haitians do which once again makes Haiti one of
9:21 · only two countries anywhere in the world outside of subsaharan Africa where the majority of the population still doesn't
9:27 · have any access to Electric Haiti is on the brink of becoming a failed state with runaway violence and
9:33 · is one of the most hopelessly impoverished countries in the world while the Dominican Republic right next door is on the cusp of transitioning
9:40 · into a high inome fully developed country by the end of the decade in 2030 if Haiti remains more or less in the
9:47 · same state as it is now by then there will probably be no other greater disparity in the entire world across
9:52 · borders by levels of development and income other than the Saudi and Oman borders with Yemen and the South Korea
9:58 · Russia China borders with North Korea so how did this very unique situation on this island develop in the first place
10:04 · why did Haiti and the Dominican Republic despite existing together on the same island for centuries and having a very
10:10 · comparable current population size end up so vastly different from one another and so separate from each other some of
10:17 · the factors that explain this difference today are historical reasons but they don't explain the whole picture you see
10:23 · the island that they both exist on Hispanola was initially colonized by the Spanish but it was first legally divided
10:28 · in 1997 by the Treaty of riswick that formerly established a Spanish colony in the Eastern 2/3 of the island and a
10:34 · French colony in the western third though the borders between them were slightly different than they are today from the very beginning of this division
10:41 · of the island though the French and the Spanish treated their separate colonies on either side radically differently the
10:46 · Spanish ended up pursuing a policy that was more focused on settler colonialism over on their side with more limited
10:51 · amounts of slavery by the standards of the Tie by the end of the 18th century the modern Dominican Republic still
10:57 · under Spanish colonial rule only had had a population of about 104,000 people only 30,000 of whom were enslaved people
11:04 · from Africa and meanwhile the French over on their side of the island treated things extremely different they pursued
11:10 · a policy of historically enormous exploitation the likes of which have hardly ever been seen before since it's
11:16 · estimated that across the 18th century alone the French forcibly transported approximately 800,000 Africans from
11:23 · their continent to modern-day Hadi of slaves a figure that represents nearly double the number of African slaves
11:29 · brought to the entire North American continent during the entirety of the North Atlantic slave trade by 1789 on
11:35 · the eve of the French Revolution it's estimated that Haiti's population was around 556 th000 people which was a
11:42 · little more than five times the total population of the neighboring Spanish Colonial Dominican Republic but only
11:48 · 32,000 of the people who lived in Haiti at that time were European whites there were an additional 24,000 freed people
11:55 · of color and an estimated 500,000 African an and their descendants Bound in the chains of slavery
12:02 · outnumbering their white Colonial Masters by a ratio of nearly 16 to1
12:07 · France used all of these slaves as their labor source to work across the vast sugar and coffee plantations that they
12:13 · set up all across the island which for a Time made Haiti the most lucrative and financially valuable colony in the
12:19 · entire world for the people who actually dominated it so ruthlessly by 1789
12:25 · roughly half of all the sugar and coffee that was being consumed in Europe came from the slave plantations of Haiti and
12:30 · they helped to make the French Kingdom the wealthiest in Europe at the time Haiti would also become independent
12:35 · decades before the Dominican Republic would and through far more violent circumstances in the midst of the chaos
12:42 · of the French Revolution the slaves of Haiti who vastly outnumbered their colonial Masters rose up in a violent
12:47 · revolution of their own in 1791 across the next 13 years both the haian slaves
12:53 · and the colonial French engaged in a brutal genocidal war of annihilation against the other wherein an estimated
13:00 · 200,000 Haitians would die and virtually the entire Colonial white population of Haiti would be either killed themselves
13:07 · or driven out of the country never to return by 1804 the French had given up and retreated from their former Colony
13:14 · but they along with the vast majority of the rest of the outside world continued refusing to recognize Haiti's
13:19 · Independence for decades and although Haiti had paid dearly with blood for their sovereignty between 1791 and 1804
13:26 · they weren't finished paying for their sovereignty with treasure yet and they wouldn't be for a very long time in 1825
13:33 · French warships showed up outside the Haitian Capital port a prince they gave the Haitians only two options one they
13:40 · could accept a deal in which France would finally recognize Haiti's Independence in exchange for Haiti
13:45 · agreeing to financially compensate France for their loss of property experienced during the Haitian
13:50 · revolution including France's loss of their hundreds of thousands of former slaves which France asserted was 150
13:58 · million Franks Haiti could either accept this backwards deal or refuse and take option two war and then the French
14:05 · warship sitting in the harbor would simply blow up everything they could and port a prince with a gun pointed to
14:10 · their head Haiti selected option one and agreed to pay their former Colonial slave masters for their own Freedom that
14:16 · they had already paid for with blood the debt became known as the French Indemnity and although France would
14:22 · technically later reduced the amount owed by the Haitians to 90 million Franks the indemnity economically
14:28 · hobbled for more than a century afterwards as they struggled paying it back with meager resources of their own
14:34 · and a continued lack of international recognition Beyond France that limited their trade opportunities the Haitians
14:40 · were in no financial position to pay back France's Indemnity that was forced upon them they then resorted to several
14:45 · Desperate Measures to help pay back the debt that included cutting down massive amounts of their own trees for their
14:51 · timber in order to sell to the French which contributed greatly to Haiti's modern catastrophic deforestation
14:58 · problem and then with no recognition by the United States or from other European powers Haiti was then forced into taking
15:04 · out several predatory loans from French banks to help pay off their original 1825 Indemnity that was forced upon them
15:11 · by the French government which transformed their original debt into effectively a double debt the original
15:16 · Indemnity plus all of the interest on the loans that they were then forced to take out in order to pay the original
15:22 · Indemnity Haiti's government coffers remain depleted and empty for decades and decades as they continually made
15:28 · attempts to pay off this debt and the French continually threatened to bomb their ports if they didn't pay by the
15:34 · 1880s the Haitian double debt was acquired by the modern cic bank that is still headquartered in Paris today while
15:40 · the payments continued cic created Haiti's First Central Bank in 1880 but it was a bank that they owned as a front
15:46 · for their own financial interest in Haiti the central bank was owned by cic instead of by the Haitian government
15:52 · itself and then the precursor of today's City Bank headquartered in New York acquired a stake in the Haitian Central
15:58 · Bank in the Haitian double debt in the early 20th century by the 1920s City Bank had bought out or outmaneuvered the
16:04 · other European shareholders in the Haitian Central Bank and so all of hai's double debt repayments on the original
16:09 · 1825 French Indemnity began flowing to Wall Street afterwards City Bank was
16:14 · then able to use its control over the Haitian Central Bank to impose tens of millions of dollars of additional
16:20 · predatory loans on the country in order to service their original 1825 Indemnity
16:25 · a situation that American Communists at the time described as transforming Haiti into an American slave Colony it wasn't
16:32 · until 1935 that the Haitian Central Bank gained its actual independence from City Bank and it wasn't until 1947 that Haiti
16:40 · managed to finally pay off the double debt that had been originally imposed on them by France
16:45 · 122 years previously in total the Haitians ended up paying a total of 112
16:51 · million Franks on their double debt or about $570 million in today's money this
16:57 · siphoning off of ha meager resources to banks in France and in the United States over more than a century prevented the
17:03 · Haitians from being able to use that money to invest in themselves with things like better infrastructure education or health care services in
17:10 · 2022 the New York Times released a landmark investigation into the lasting Legacy of this double debt forced upon
17:17 · haian society and concluded that had all of that money stayed within Haiti from the very beginning and was used for
17:23 · their own development and compounded over the past two centuries of history since then it would have been worth a
17:29 · minimum of approximately $21 billion in today's money and potentially as much as
17:34 · $115 billion by other estimates after the Dominican Republic gained their own independence they would never face this
17:41 · same kind of debt problem that was forced upon them by their former Colonial overlords that lasted well into
17:47 · the mid 20th century and so they would have greater opportunities to invest resources into themselves from earlier
17:53 · on but that's still only a part of the full explanation into how they became so different today in the 21st century you
18:00 · see the Dominican Republic achieved its first independence from Spain in 1821 under much better circumstances that
18:06 · Haiti achieved theirs from France but immediately afterwards Haiti decided to invade and conquer the Dominican
18:13 · Republic just the following year in 1822 3 years before the double debt was
18:18 · forced upon them by France after the double debt was forced on them the Haitians attempted to then Force the
18:24 · Dominicans they had conquered to help pay it off by levying very high tax on them the Haitians would end up occupying
18:30 · the Dominican Republic for a total of 22 years as they attempted to incorporate the entire Island under the rule of
18:36 · Haiti an occupation that is remembered within the Dominican Republic today as a particularly brutal and dark period in
18:42 · their history that continues to negatively influence Dominican Republic Haiti relations to this day eventually
18:48 · the Dominican Republic was able to fight off their Haitian occupiers in 1844 after 22 years of control but the
18:54 · Haitians refused to recognize their independence and would launch four more milit military invasions into the
18:59 · Dominican Republic until they were finally decisively defeated for good in 1856 it wouldn't be all the way until
19:07 · 1867 that Haiti would finally recognize the Dominican Republic's Independence and abandoned their ambition to dominate
19:14 · the entire Island from there the two sides of the same island experienced fairly similar histories for a very long
19:20 · time although the Dominican Republic didn't have the same exact kind of debt issues that Haiti had both were
19:26 · impoverished and politically unstable countries susceptible to violence and authoritarian dictatorships for decades
19:32 · for a Time the United States even invaded and occupied both of them for very similar reasons ensuring that both
19:37 · of their debts continued being paid to Wall Street City Bank was able to convince the United States to invade and
19:43 · occupy Haiti in 1915 while the Dominican Republic was invaded and occupied by American troops the following year in
19:49 · 1916 for 7 years the United States occupied the entirety of Hispanola and
19:55 · meddled around with the Border further to create the modern bound boundary between Haiti and the Dominican Republic that we know today the United States
20:02 · withdrew from the Dominican Republic in 1924 but continued occupying Haiti for the next decade until 1934 representing
20:09 · a 19- yearlong occupation of Haiti by the United States and representing one of the longest foreign occupations in
20:16 · all of American History Allis city Bank was able to expand its economic control over the country and impose new
20:21 · predatory loans on the Haitian government in the process then after the United States withdrew from both
20:27 · countries the Republic and Haiti alike experienced long periods of authoritarian dictatorial rule that saw
20:33 · little economic progress being made for decades the Dominican Republic came under the control of a former General
20:38 · named rapael truo in 1930 just 6 years after the Americans left the country
20:44 · while Haiti eventually coalesced under the control of another dictator named Francois duvalier in 1957 tru's police
20:51 · state in the Dominican Republic lasted for 31 years until he was assassinated in 1961 leading to another period of
20:57 · Chaos in the the Dominican Republic that culminated with a civil war in the country blowing up in 1965 then fearful of the Communist
21:04 · Regime in Cuba's ability to influence the Civil War and flipped the Dominican Republic into another Caribbean
21:09 · communist state the United States intervened directly in the Dominican Civil War and found itself occupying the
21:15 · Dominican Republic again but after that the United States was able to organize elections in the country in 1966 and
21:21 · withdrew the same year and there has never been another foreign intervention or occupation of the Dominican Republic
21:27 · ever since Since the situation in Haiti meanwhile turned out very differently Haiti was dominated by franois dualer
21:34 · and his own authoritarian police state until his own death in 1971 but unlike tru's long regime in the Dominican
21:41 · Republic that collapsed immediately after his death the dualer regime in Haiti survived with a succession of
21:46 · franois duvalier's son Jean Claude duvalier who continued ruling the country as an authoritarian police state
21:52 · for the next 15 years up until 1986 when he was finally overthrown by a cou d'a
21:59 · during these 29 years that the dualer regime survived in Haiti it was consistently supported and propped up by
22:05 · the United States because of the duvalier's harsh anti-communist policies that Washington saw as vital to
22:10 · counterbalancing communist Cuba in the Caribbean only 50 Mi away from Haiti communist activities within Haiti were
22:17 · punishable by the death penalty under the duvalay and as many as 60,000 Haitians were killed by their seet
22:24 · police so ultimately while the Dominican Republic emerged from their authoritarian dictatorship and Civil War
22:29 · period in 1966 Haiti wouldn't end up emerging from their dictatorship period until 20 years later in
22:36 · 1986 and they've never been able to emerge from their chaotic period afterwards up to the point of 1966 when
22:43 · the Dominican Republic successfully held elections and the United States withdrew from the country the Dominican Republic and Haiti were basically two sides of
22:50 · the same coin both were highly impoverished and underdeveloped with very similarly sized economies very
22:56 · similar incomes very similar population sizes and both had been isolated from the outside world for decades because of
23:02 · long-standing authoritarian dictatorships and or continuous political instability that had long scared away foreign investment but then
23:09 · things started changing for the Dominican Republic in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the country began
23:15 · successfully reforming itself becoming more democratic more stable and steadily opening up more to trade with the
23:21 · outside world it's at this moment that when you compare the graphs of inflation adjusted GDP per capita between the
23:27 · Dominican Republic in Haiti that you begin to see the Dominican Republic finally start rapidly accelerating away
23:33 · from Haiti and the strange part about this graph is that the absolute all-time high of Haiti's GDP per capita to date
23:40 · was actually backed during the repressive Duval dictatorship period all the way back in 1980 ever since then for
23:47 · more than 40 years now Haiti GDP per capita has either decreased continually
23:52 · or remain largely stagnant while the Dominican Republics has continually exploded up upwards so clearly while
24:00 · deep historical factors have played a role in Haiti's crippling poverty and instability today the very clear
24:05 · economic Divergence between Haiti and the Dominican Republic didn't actually start happening until fairly recently
24:12 · after 1968 and there are probably many many reasons for that for one foreign
24:17 · investors like investing in countries that are politically stable over ones that are not and Haiti has continued
24:23 · being chronically unstable ever since 1986 after the impressive 29- yearlong
24:29 · duvalier regime was overthrown that year the Haitian military established a transitional regime until the first open
24:34 · and free elections in Haitian history were held in 1990 which resulted in the first election of Jean Bertrand aristy
24:42 · the first democratically elected leader of Haiti's modern history however he was only able to serve as the country's
24:48 · president for 7 months until September of 1991 when the military decided to launch another coup and overthrow him
24:55 · which led to the Clinton Administration in the United States to initiate an economic blockade of Haiti with new
25:00 · trade restrictions that impoverished the country even further and then eventually the Clinton Administration authorized a
25:06 · new American Military intervention into the country in 1994 to topple the military hunter from power and restore
25:13 · aisti back to the presidency the United States sent two aircraft carriers to Haiti and more than 20,000 troops during
25:20 · operation uphold democracy in 1994 and then faced with this overwhelming Firepower the haian military hund
25:27 · collapsed and conceited power to avoid a war they knew they would lose aristy was
25:33 · then reinstated as the country's president and then he would win reelection again for another term in
25:38 · 2001 but then after the United States military intervened to restore him to power and after Ain won his next
25:44 · election again in 2001 he would end up doing something that would really really piss off both the United States and
25:51 · France he didn't start committing massive human rights violations he didn't start any wars or start any trade
25:57 · disputes what he did was far worse he had the goal in 2003 to become the first
26:04 · and so far only leader in Haiti's entire history to formally demand that
26:09 · reparations be paid to Haiti from France over the indemnity and the double debt
26:14 · that they had forced upon them all the way back in 1825 Arin demanded that France pay Haiti
26:21 · nothing less than $21 billion in reparations a figure that was at the
26:27 · time more than four times greater than the entire haian GDP within only months
26:33 · of him making this demand farri paramilitary rebels in Haiti began launching an extremely successful
26:39 · rebellion in the country and some of these Rebels had allegedly received previous training from US Special Forces
26:46 · by February of 2004 these Rebels had captured Haiti's fourth and second largest cities and they were beginning
26:51 · to lay Siege to the capital Porter Prince as the rebels began breaking into and sacking the capital on the the 29th
26:58 · of February Diplomatic Security Service officers from the United States arrived at the haian presidential Palace and
27:04 · what followed next between them is unclear and deeply controversial according to most American government
27:10 · officials arisin chose to then voluntarily resign as Haiti's president and wanted to escape from the country as
27:16 · the rebels broke into the capital he allegedly agreed to be transferred to hadi's primary airport escorted by US
27:22 · security Personnel where he then boarded a plane and was flown directly to the Central African Republic to live a new
27:28 · life in Exile however there are tons of conflicting accounts as to what exactly
27:33 · happened according to aristy himself the American officials who came to him on that morning pressured him into
27:38 · immediately resigning saying that if he didn't the rebels would break into the palace and murder him in his entire
27:43 · family aide claimed that he was forced to resign then kidnapped by American forces taken at gunpoint to the airport
27:50 · and then flown out without any knowledge of where he was actually going where the French managed to convince the Central
27:56 · African Republic to accept him live on the plane as the events were continuing to happen where he was then forcibly
28:02 · flown into Exile against his will these allegations from aristy have also been
28:07 · pretty heavily supported by the actions of the Americans and the French that surrounded the timeline of his removal
28:12 · from Power very notably the United Nations security Council of which France and the United States are each permanent
28:18 · members rejected an appeal from the Caribbean community on the 26th of February 2004 that would have sent
28:24 · International peacekeeping forces to Haiti to stop the Rebellion before aristy had actually resigned then only 3
28:32 · days later on the 29th of February merely hours after aristy had resigned
28:37 · under these dubious circumstances the United Nations security Council suddenly voted unanimously with both French and
28:44 · American approvals to authorize an armed intervention into Haiti immediately after arista's resignation in Exile
28:51 · Haiti Supreme Court chief justice named bonafos Alexander succeeded him as the acting interim president and wouldn't
28:57 · you know it Alexander also immediately withdrew Haiti's demand for the $21 billion worth of reparations from France
29:05 · that aride had made himself only months previously and no official Haitian government demands on the reparations
29:11 · have been made ever since the very next day a thousand US Marines were suddenly
29:16 · deployed to Haiti to restore order while French Canadian and Chilean troops came the following morning 18 years later in
29:23 · 2022 a damning report released by The New York Times including direct testimony from the former French
29:29 · Ambassador who was serving to Haiti back then in 2004 concluded that the events of February 2004 in hati amounted to
29:36 · nothing less than a cou d'a toss sponsored by France and the United States to overthrow the democratically
29:42 · elected government of Jean Bertrand aristy in order to crush Haiti's demands for $21 billion worth of reparations
29:49 · from France then after aristy was pushed into Exile in Africa the United States passed over the responsibility of
29:55 · maintaining the peace in Haiti to the French and then later to the Brazilians as the United Nations stabilization
30:01 · mission in Haiti better known by its French acronym as Mana led by the Brazilians for nearly all of its history
30:07 · Mana was initially tasked with simply restoring Law and Order and democracy to Haiti by creating the conditions
30:12 · required to host new elections again but mana and thousands of foreign troops from all over the world would remain in
30:18 · Haiti all the way until 2019 15 years later after they had arrived as Haiti
30:25 · stability always seemed forever Out Of Reach Mission creep set in and more and more disasters kept befalling the
30:33 · chronically unfortunate people of hati you see across the 1990s and 2000s it
30:38 · was continuous political disasters coups rebellions and foreign interventions that kept hobbling Haiti's ability to
30:45 · develop events that were all nearly absent within the Dominican Republic but in the next decade across the 2010s it
30:51 · would become Haiti's unique Geographic problems that would contribute more to the pace of continuous disasters is
30:57 · holding the country back because while thousands of foreign troops in Haiti under Mana could change Haiti's
31:03 · political stability through Force they could do nothing to alter Haiti's Geographic instability you see despite
31:09 · being located on the same island Haiti and the Dominican Republic do have some very notably different Geographic quirks
31:15 · about them well some people have speculated in the past that the rainfall levels are higher in the Dominican Republic and that contributes to better
31:22 · agricultural potential that's not actually really true rainfall levels across both sides of the island are
31:27 · fairly consistent and if anything the Haitian side actually receives a little more rainfall than the Dominican side
31:32 · does with abundant rainfall warm temperatures year round in Fairly good soils both sides of the island naturally
31:39 · possess a very strong capability for agriculture it's why Haiti was the epicenter of the global sugar and coffee
31:44 · Industries back during the colonial era both sides of the island have also experienced very similar demographic growth rate since the start of the 1950s
31:52 · in 1961 at the end of the true hio dictatorship in the Dominican Republic Haiti's population was was roughly 4
31:57 · million while the Dominican Republics was about 3.4 million 40 Years Later by
32:03 · 2001 the Dominican Republic's population more than doubled to about 8.7 million while Haiti would roughly double as well
32:10 · to about 8.5 million well both would keep on growing from there at similar rates to their current populations in
32:15 · 2023 of about 11.8 million people in Haiti and 11.3 million people in the
32:20 · Dominican Republic however despite the two having very similar levels of demographic growth and very similar
32:26 · total population sizes Haiti is only about half of the Dominican Republic's Geographic size which means that Haiti
32:33 · has always been significantly more densely populated than the Dominican Republic has been in fact out of all the
32:40 · countries in the world today with more than 1 million people Haiti is one of the most densely populated anywhere with
32:45 · an average density that's roughly identical to the Netherlands other than little Barbados Haiti is the most
32:51 · densely populated country in the Western Hemisphere today with a significantly higher density than all of its immediate
32:57 · neighbors but density all on its own doesn't imply poverty in fact higher population densities appear to correlate
33:03 · more with greater wealth generation worldwide not less out of the top 15 densest countries with more than a
33:10 · million people in the world roughly half of them are considered to be highly developed economies most of them are
33:16 · fairly middle of the road and only three of them are considered to be least developed countries and only Haiti among
33:22 · those three is located outside of subsaharan Africa within hai's unique GE graphic setting however higher
33:28 · population density works against it in the sense that Haiti is also one of the most uniquely vulnerable locations in
33:35 · the world to frequent natural disasters of many different kinds both sides of
33:40 · Hispanola are very frequently battered by tropical storms and hurricanes being that Hispanola is placed in the western
33:46 · Atlantic and the Caribbean which is one of the most hurricane prone locations in the world devastating and Powerful
33:52 · hurricanes have rocked both Haiti and the Dominican Republic all throughout their histories but Haiti has evolved
33:58 · over time to become more vulnerable to these storms for two very big reasons
34:03 · first hai's population is obviously far more concentrated than within the Dominican Republic which makes them more
34:09 · vulnerable to higher levels of damage whenever these storms hit the island and second Haiti has a serious deforestation
34:16 · problem that the neighboring Dominican Republic simply doesn't have Haiti cut down huge amounts of their forests to
34:22 · sell to the French and the Americans across the 19th and 20th centuries to help pay off their double debt while
34:28 · more recently it was eventually found that Hispanola has practically zero coal oil or natural gas resources and that's
34:35 · meant that for their entire modern histories both Haiti and the Dominican Republic have had to import virtually
34:41 · the entirety of the fossil fuels that they've consumed and both continue relying on these Imports very heavily
34:47 · Haiti continues to generate 80% of their electricity with these imported fossil fuels while the Dominican Republic
34:53 · generates 85% of their electricity with them and both continue to overwhelmingly rely on imported gasoline for their
34:59 · transportation sectors but because the Dominican Republic has been a more politically stable source of foreign
35:05 · investment ever since the 1970s the Dominican Republic has been able to attract greater foreign investment than
35:11 · Haiti has and so they have a significantly more developed electricity grid than Haiti does while the Dominican Republic's electricity grid is far from
35:18 · perfect and still subject to occasional blackouts more than 98% of the Dominican population has regular access to
35:24 · electricity as of 2021 only 47% of Haitians have regular access to
35:30 · electricity Haiti is therefore one of only two countries worldwide outside of subsaharan Africa where the majority of
35:36 · people still don't have any access to electricity the only other one being Papua New Guinea and Oceania and because
35:42 · of this the majority of Haitians continue relying instead on burning wood for charcoal as their primary source of
35:48 · energy which is also obviously exacerbated what was Haiti's already bad deforestation problem as of 2023 it's
35:56 · currently estimated that because of these factors only about 12% of Haiti's land continues to be covered by Forest
36:03 · which is down from about 60% Forest cover only a century ago back in 1923
36:09 · the neighboring Dominican Republic right next door however continues to have about 44% of its much larger land mass
36:16 · covered by forests this huge difference between them becomes extremely evident
36:22 · when you look at the border between them today which even without the wall that's currently being constructed between them
36:27 · is one of the most obvious political borders anywhere in the world to spot from the air or from space because the
36:32 · Haitian side has virtually zero trees whatsoever while the Dominican Republic side is still covered by thick forests
36:40 · the trees literally begin and end precisely where the Dominican Republic begins and ends Haiti deforestation
36:46 · problem then further increases the country's vulnerability to hurricanes and tropical storms because without all
36:52 · of the trees and their deep roots planted in the soil Haiti soil is much more vulnerable to erosion and so when
36:58 · hurricanes and tropical storms hit the island the Haitian side experiences more catastrophic floods landslides and
37:04 · mudslides than the Dominican side does and so because of its much greater population density and its much worse
37:10 · deforestation problem Haiti is more vulnerable to destruction from hurricanes than the Dominican Republic
37:15 · is despite them each being present on the same exact Island but Haiti also has
37:21 · another extremely serious Geographic handicap that is largely absent in the neighboring Dominican Republic the
37:27 · existence of very active tectonic fault lines that run directly through their most densely populated areas you see the
37:34 · island of Hispanola exists at the geologic intersection of the North American tectonic plate to the North and
37:40 · the Caribbean tectonic plate to the South two major fault lines run across the island in the South and the North
37:46 · and when you overlay a map of the Island's population density and political borders over these fault lines you begin to see the major problem Haiti
37:54 · is more than twice as densely populated as the Dominican Republic and the most densely populated part of the country is
38:00 · located precisely along this Southern fault line the Dominican Republic has a more spread out population and the
38:06 · Dominican Republic's biggest city Santo Domingo is safely located in the southeast of the island far away from
38:12 · both of the fault lines and across recent history this Northern fault line has been the more dormant of the two
38:19 · with very few notable events over the past several centuries this is meant that the Dominican Republic's second
38:24 · largest city Santiago deos cab Aros has been spared from any very big earthquakes just like the Dominican
38:30 · Republic's largest city has been as well and then on the other hand Haiti has not
38:36 · been as fortunate it appears that the southern fault line that runs through the island goes through alternating
38:41 · periods of intense seismic activity and long dormant periods in between it was
38:46 · very active during the French and Spanish Colonial periods and caused frequent devastating earthquakes back then but then it remained largely
38:53 · dormant for a very long period of 24 40 years until the unfortunate Year of 2010
39:00 · came around in between that time the haian people started caring less about a potential future earthquake that might
39:06 · or might not have happened during their lifetimes and started caring more about the frequent hurricanes that battered
39:12 · them nearly every single year and so they began building their homes out of concrete and cinder blocks they were
39:18 · better at resisting the Strong Winds of hurricanes in comparison to homes built out of wood that would have been better
39:24 · at resisting the Tremors of an earthquake and then in 2010 after 240
39:30 · years of dorcy the Southern fault line Unleashed a catastrophic earthquake that
39:35 · shook the nation of Haiti to their core the epicenter of the Quake struck merely
39:40 · 16 miles away from haes capital and largest city Porto Prince the homes that
39:45 · were poorly built with cemented cinder blocks to resist hurricanes Came Crashing Down and an estimated
39:52 · 250,000 Haitians lost their lives making the 2010 Haiti earthquake the single
39:58 · deadliest natural disaster of the entire 21st century so far and something that
40:04 · the neighboring Dominican Republic was almost completely spared from and in addition to killing around a quarter of
40:09 · a million people in Haiti the 2010 earthquake caused an estimated $8.5 billion dollar in economic damage to the
40:17 · country as well a figure that represented nearly three4 of the entire Haitian GDP at the time the Brazilian Le
40:24 · Mana still present in Haiti from the 4 rebellion in coup was forced into extending their stay for longer in the
40:30 · country in order to deal with the sheer apocalyptic scale of the humanitarian disaster after 2010 and then almost
40:38 · immediately after the earthquake ravaged Haiti Disaster struck the country yet again foreign aid workers from all
40:45 · around the world came to Haiti after the earthquake to assist with the United Nations response and Recovery efforts
40:50 · but it's believed that only months after the earthquake happened United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal who came to
40:56 · assist Mana in Haiti accidentally introduced chalera to the country a bacterial disease that mostly spreads
41:02 · through unsanitary water and food the introduction of that disease to Haiti then sparked what also became the
41:08 · deadliest chaler outbreak of the entire 21st century as well over the next 9
41:14 · years up until 2019 nearly 820,000 people in Haiti would become infected by
41:20 · CA while 10,000 of them would die from the disease and then as the chalera
41:25 · outbreak was raging the country was still reeling from the catastrophe of the 2010 earthquake came Hurricane
41:31 · Matthew in October of 2016 a category 4 storm that was the third strongest
41:36 · hurricane ever on record to strike Haiti that storm killed another 546 people in
41:42 · Haiti caused another $2.8 billion more in economic damages destroyed more than
41:48 · 200,000 people's homes and exacerbated the country's still ongoing chera epidemic even further Mina would finally
41:56 · withdraw from Haiti in 2019 after 15 years of continuous presence in the country but the lasting legacies of the
42:03 · 2004 us and French intervention in the country that overthrew the democratically elected president who had
42:09 · demanded reparations from France and then Mina's subsequent introduction of kalera to Haiti that killed thousands
42:15 · more all combined to severely damage Haiti's trust in the rest of the outside world while the failure after failure of
42:22 · the 1994 intervention and the 2004 to 2019 intervention to actually establish
42:28 · stability within Haiti left a bad taste in the mouth of the outside world as well who didn't really want to try
42:34 · intervening in Haiti again Haiti's last elected president jovenel Moi was elected in 2016 as Mana continued
42:42 · remaining in the country and that would ultimately end up becoming what is to date the final election that's ever been
42:47 · held in the country boyy himself repeatedly faced accusations of corruption and after he started delaying
42:52 · Haiti parliamentary elections that were supposed to be held in 2019 while man USTA withdrew from the country protests
42:58 · against his administration began growing and then came his assassination in July of 2021 under the aformentioned deeply
43:04 · suspicious circumstances and Ariel Henry who might have had something to do with the assassination Rose to power in his
43:11 · place without any election afterwards and then only 2 months after Mo's assassination and the rise of Henry the
43:17 · southern fault line running through Haiti triggered again and caused another catastrophic earthquake in Haiti's
43:23 · tiberon Peninsula that killed more than 2200 people and caused another $1.7
43:28 · billion in estimated economic damage and that is what established the conditions
43:33 · for the gangs in Haiti to begin carving out their control of about 90% of the country's capital Haiti's current status
43:40 · as a failing State and the United Nations deciding that yet another armed intervention into the country was
43:45 · necessary just a few months ago this time however the Biden Administration in Washington decided that the United
43:52 · States would not be the one leading the intervention on the ground because of how badly ly all of the past several us
43:57 · interventions into the country of all gone after approaching Canada and Brazil Who each refused to lead the mission
44:03 · Washington eventually turned to Kenya to lead this latest intervention Kenya does have significant experience with
44:09 · previous un peacekeeping operations and more importantly the Biden Administration was able to convince them
44:15 · to lead this new intervention into Haiti by putting up $100 million worth of funding to cover it in addition to
44:21 · agreeing on a 5-year defense cooperation agreement with Kenya that offered up unspecified us support for Kenya and
44:27 · their own ongoing war with al-shabab in neighboring Somalia so in exchange for
44:32 · increased American Support fighting against al-shabab at home and knowing that Kenyan soldiers can earn much higher wages as a part of un
44:39 · peacekeeping operations than they otherwise could within the Kenyan Armed Forces Kenya has agreed to lead the
44:44 · charge into Haiti and deploy a thousand of their own police officers and soldiers as a part of this newest un
44:49 · intervention their mission will be to reclaim the control of Porto Prince from The Gangs Who currently dominate the
44:54 · city and restore the Authority back to the Haitian government so that elections continually delayed ever since 2016 can
45:01 · finally take place again but doubts abound as to how successful this Kenyon Le intervention into Haiti will actually
45:07 · end up being there is a very very long history of corruption in both the Kenyan and the haian police forces there are
45:14 · fears that Kenya's intervention might end up just strengthening The Power of One gang in Haiti that happens to have
45:19 · ties to the Haitian government and police that will end up dominating over all of the others and while the Kenyans
45:25 · backed by American funding might be able to restore the Haitian government's security sovereignty two things that
45:30 · they won't be able to restore to Haiti on their own will be the country's monetary sovereignty and its safety from
45:35 · continued natural disasters in total natural disasters in Haiti between 2010
45:40 · and the present have caused around $14 billion worth of economic damage to the country and have continued hobbling
45:47 · Haiti's ability to develop while the last time that a major natural disaster hit the Dominican Republic was Hurricane
45:53 · George back in 1998 the caus more than $9.3 billion in damage but there have
45:59 · been very negligible natural disasters that have happened to the Dominican Republic ever since ultimately without
46:05 · the same deforestation problem without the same high levels of population density and without the same levels of
46:11 · crippling economic lost opportunities from the colonial era that Haiti has endured the Dominican Republic has been
46:16 · much more resistant to earthquakes and hurricanes than Haiti has been and with much less frequent catastrophic natural
46:22 · disasters and greater political stability the Dominican Republic has been able to accomplish a lot of things
46:27 · recently that Haiti has never been able to do like establishing an absolutely booming tourism sector in 2022 more than
46:35 · 82 million tourists visited the Dominican Republic making it the most popular tourist destination in the
46:42 · entire Caribbean and even within the top five most popular tourist destinations in all of the Americas tourism now
46:49 · accounts for nearly 12% of the Dominican Republic's entire GDP and it's become one of the country's leading Industries
46:56 · but Haiti because of its terrible poverty frequent disasters and chronic internal instability and violence has
47:02 · long struggled to attract the same levels of Tourism as its neighbor as recently as 2018 though Haiti was still
47:09 · able to successfully pull around 1.3 million tourists to the country and earned around $620 million in the
47:16 · process but ever since the covid-19 pandemic began and this most recent crisis in the country began in 2021
47:23 · tourism to Haiti has crashed to a virtual standstill that year in 2021 a
47:28 · mere 148,000 tourists visited Haiti and they generated only 80 million in
47:34 · revenue for the country and that's in comparison to the 8.5 million tourists who visited the Dominican Republic in
47:41 · 20122 hadi's got many of the same Geographic historic and cultural appeals to tourism that the Dominican Republic
47:48 · has but it just has The Chronic instability poverty and natural disaster issues that the Dominican Republic
47:54 · doesn't and so so tourism towards the Dominican Republic continues growing year after year in a sort of positive
48:00 · feedback loop while tourism towards Haiti continues crashing year after year in a more sort of negative feedback loop
48:07 · which has been expanding the wealth gap between the Dominican Republic and Haiti even further and while neither side has
48:13 · any major fossil fuel resources the Dominican Republic has had far more mineral wealth discovered than Haiti has
48:20 · which includes the location of what's literally the largest and most profitable gold mine in all of Latin
48:26 · America and the 13th largest gold mine discovered in the entire world the Pueblo Vio mine this single huge Gold
48:34 · Mine currently represents about 2% of the Dominican Republic's entire GDP now
48:39 · and it's become the country's single largest corporate taxpayer having paid more than $2.6 billion in taxes just
48:46 · between 2013 and 2020 by contrast Haiti has exactly zero existing mines
48:53 · currently in operation and there haven't ever been any discoveries made in the country that are as significant as Pueblo vijo in the Dominican Republic
49:00 · the Dominican Republic has been able to use their excess tax revenues from their booming tourism and Mining sectors that
49:06 · are absent in Haiti to reinvest aggressively into education healthc care and infrastructure in the country which
49:12 · has then only compounded the Dominican Republic's economic advantages over Haiti even further and this is all in a
49:19 · nutshell why the Dominican Republic has become so much more prosperous than Haiti has and with yet another foreign
49:26 · intervention into Haiti looming it's unclear what if anything could end up fixing Haiti permanently in the future
49:33 · some arguments have been made that in order to fix Haiti for good the country's economic sovereignty should be
49:38 · finally restored to it at the same time as the country's security sovereignty is restored the argument goes that the
49:45 · French government who initially extorted Haiti with the indemnity in 1825 along with the American government
49:52 · and the banks like cic and City Bank who profited off of of the indemnity later should finally honor the demands made by
49:59 · Jean Bertrand aristy in 2003 by setting up a reparations payment to Haiti
50:04 · totaling $21 billion an amount that is still greater than the entire Haitian
50:09 · GDP without it they argue Haiti will continue not being able to invest in themselves and develop themselves and
50:16 · they'll continue being a politically unstable and violent open wound on the Earth's surface that continues causing
50:22 · expensive problems for all of their neighbors down the road like the Dominican Republic's new border wall in
50:28 · addition to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing towards the United States that Washington will keep having
50:34 · to deal with if this next intervention into Haiti only restores the government sovereignty in a security sense and not
50:40 · in an economic sense with the reparations then future costly International interventions into Haiti
50:46 · might continue becoming necessary as they've ultimately proven to be after every single previous intervention that
50:53 · never attempted to make right the historical wrong done to Haiti in the first place but the last time that a
50:59 · Haitian head of state demanded these reparations in 2003 it seemingly resulted in a us and French sponsored
51:06 · coup his own forced exile to another continent and 15 years worth of foreign
51:11 · troops on their territory that apparently accomplished so little in all that time that more foreign troops are
51:17 · going back to the country again only 4 years after they left and as a result
51:23 · the future of Haiti has arguably never been in more doubt than it currently is while the Dominican Republic's future is
51:30 · bright enough that it will likely emerge as a fully developed country by the end of the decade with a wall resembling a
51:36 · fortress that will separate itself from the completely different universe that will exist over on the Island's other
51:43 · side a frontier that could eventually become historically different as the one separating South Korea from North Korea
51:49 · is today and just like how the Korean Peninsula produced two very different outcomes today so too has the island of
51:57 · Hispanola for a very very complex variety of reasons engineering a
52:03 · solution to hai's many complicated problems is without a question one of the most challenging and pressing issues
52:09 · facing the International Community today but our world is full of an inconceivable number of complicated
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